


Odds & Ends

by shades



Series: like thieves in the night [5]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Background Relationships, Curtains Fic, Gen, Happily Every After, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28057665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shades/pseuds/shades
Summary: Scenes from the happily-ever-after
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith, Charles Smith & Tilly Jackson
Series: like thieves in the night [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1572790
Comments: 7
Kudos: 67





	Odds & Ends

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter takes place about a week after [and so, spring](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24636883), when John still has his nose in a sling.

It’s maybe a week since young Charlotte was born, and Tilly is sitting on a log in the shade of a budding oak tree, some sewing left forgotten over her lap, her chin perched on her fist as she takes in the spectacle unfolding below. 

“I said _lift_ goddammit!” Arthur shouts, unseen, as John tries to lever the back of a wagon from the sucking mud that trapped it a few days before. John is up to knees in muck, struggling to heft the wagon high enough to let Arthur get a look at the busted axle, but it’s a losing battle. It’s easily a job for four men but with Arthur and John acting so foolish lately, she wouldn’t put it past Hosea to put just the two of them on this little project as a lesson. Last Tilly saw of Arthur, he’d been marshalling himself to climb under the wagon and into the squelching mud to see what there was to be done about it. 

“I’m lifting, you fucking idiot!” John snaps back. Even this far out, Tilly can see the strain in his neck as he heaves up on the rear of the wagon.

“Fuckin’ goddamn whiney weakling - “

“You want me to let this go on that thick skull of yours or -?”

There’s a snap of twigs behind her, followed by a huff of Charles’ laughter. “See you found some entertainment for yourself,” he says, passing her a cool mug of iced tea, brought down fresh from the house. 

“I never been much for sports, but this suits just fine,” she says, sipping it with real appreciation. It was strange, still, having access to all the sugar and suchlike they could ask for. Nearly made her forget the pangs of hunger in the middle of the night. Nearly. “You wanna put money on who ends up with a broken nose?”

“No bet,” Charles says, grinning as he sets himself down in the convenient cradle of tree roots at the base of the tree, folding up neatly with a block of wood and the whittling tools she’d nicked for him a few months back. “They’re both getting busted noses. Only keen money is on who gets one first.”

"God as my witness, Marston!" Arthur yells, flouncing out from under the wagon, covered up to his collar bones in mud, "Maybe you get off your ass once in a while to do some honest work you wouldn't have arms like noodles!"

"Oh honest work?" John shouts back, "You're gonna stand there and scream at me about honest god damn work?"

"They ain't kissed and made up yet?" Tilly says innocently, batting her eyes at Charles over the lip of her mug. Charles snickers, or nearly so, it's only the long months of knowing the man that shows his tells. His hair is tied back, the sides of his head shorn, and he looks handsome when he smiles, a small, private thing tucked down against his chest.

"You know," Charles says pensively as Arthur shouts another string of expletives and picks up a fistful of mud and slings it across the wagon, catching John full in his open mouth. "I don't think they have."

"You're a dead man, Morgan," John shouts, spitting mud as he levers himself into the wagon and then right back off it again, lunging for Arthur in a full tackle, sending them both sprawling down with a splash.

Tilly sighs softly, shaking her head. For the minute, the tussle is out of view behind the wagon, but they can still hear plenty. All that temper isn’t just about getting the wagon set to rights. 

“Why didn't he just tell him?" Tilly asks. 

"You think I understand a tenth of what goes on in that man's head," Charles says slowly, picking idly at the block of wood in the curve of his palm, "Then you sorely misunderstand our relationship."

Tilly snorts, raising her eyebrows. "Way I remember it, I was the first one who knew there was a relationship to misunderstand in the first place."

Charles arches his eyebrows straight back at her. "Huh...that so? All I remember is a bunch of prying and hectoring."

"Hmmmm..." Tilly says, turning her gaze back to the fight; they’re both back on their feet, slinging mud at each other like toddlers. "That don't sound like me."

"Uh-huh," Charles says, shaking his head, tucking a smile down to his chest. It hadn’t been hard to spot, really, not once you knew what you were looking for. Tilly remembers one night in particular - they’d all been drinking, celebrating some long-forgotten job with whiskey and Dutch’s gramophone cranked up loud enough to send all the game in the area springing off into the high grass. There’d been a campfire, a surplus of booze and good spirits, and Charles had been watching Arthur tell some rambling, convoluted joke to which he ultimately forgot the punchline, his eyes smiling and his heart on his sleeve. Just one sliver of a moment, a half-held secret, that forced so many things into focus.

"Arthur doesn’t do much in the way of talking, and I’ve never known him to explain himself to anyone,” Charles says eventually, staring down at the block of wood in his hands. “But, he isn’t always...wise about us. Don’t think he’d go telling folks at the saloon, but he doesn’t always… _think_.” He sighs, arching his eyebrows at Tilly. “And, apparently, I’m no better, where some folks are concerned.”

Tilly tilts her chin, choosing to take that as a compliment. “You think you’re so clever, but anyone with half a brain would’a seen the way you looked at him.”

Charles makes a noise of protest, but Tilly would bet anything his cheeks are hot. He’d been so skittish at first. She hadn’t meant to embarrass him, she’d just asked for him to join her on a walk one sunny fall afternoon, just for the pleasure of his company. Charles had been distracted and, once she’d been picking at him the better part of an hour, admitted, “I just don’t want to...mislead you Miss Jackson, I think you’re a fine woman, but -”

Tilly had cocked a grin at him, trying to be gentle. “A fine _woman_ ain’t what you’re looking for?”

Tilly figures Charles has been through enough to make him wary, and sure enough he’d pulled away from her like he’d touched a hot coal. But as the days and weeks slid by, he seemed to accept she wasn’t about to tell his secret, nor shame him for it. There had been a night a few weeks later - she watched the two of them at the campfire, both of them in their cups and laughing, until finally Arthur slipped off into sleep with his head resting on Charles’ shoulder. Charles had caught her watching them and given her a helpless, hopeful look; maybe things weren’t as impossible as they originally appeared. How he ultimately got Arthur into his sheets was a story he couldn’t be drawn on telling, though not for lack of trying on her part. 

Tilly sighs, setting her mug aside. Distantly, she can hear John shouting “Uncle! Say uncle, goddamit!” and Arthur hollering back, “Not on your fucking life, Marston!”

"And, be honest, it was funny the first few months," she says, grinning over at him. 

Unwillingly, Charles laughs. He’s a handsome man, a good one, and she’d be lying if she said she never considered him, much as she’s weighed and measured most of the men in the gang. Sean, whose ego needs kicking down to size, Lenny who’s kind and sharp but who needs a woman to take care of, to dote on. Javier, whose burning passion nearly cracked the crucible of his heart and let that unjust rage burn through him. Javier, she thinks, who is doing so much better these days, mending himself like reset bones, just one more thread of goodness Charles’ gamble has strung into the world. She loves them all, for her sins, but Charles stands apart, a strange, kind man in a violent and unforgiving world. Of course she’s considered him, a woman would be a fool not to. 

Charles laughs again suddenly. When she gives him a questioning look he lowers his voice and says, “Hell, I probably shouldn’t tell you this but - Marston busted into the cabin back around Christmas, no knock, no warning. You’d think the man hadn’t ever used a door before.” He cringes, rubbing his brow and avoiding her eyes. “We’d been - well. Arthur was in the all together and I got stuck standing bare-assed naked behind the bedroom door. He fed John some line of bullshit about rolling around nude in the snow like the Swedes do, or something, beating eachother with tree branches.” Tilly can’t help it, she laughs aloud, bent over her stitching, and Charles can't keep the humor out of his voice when he says, “It's not our fault John believed him!"

When they’ve quieted down, Tilly tuts and shakes her head. “It’s his pride,” she says. Arthur has squirmed out of John’s hold and is staggering to his feet. His hat’s been lost in the skirmish and he’s painted with mud up and down and sideways, it’s on his face and matted into his hair. Across from him, John looks no better, wild-eyed and struggling to tug his foot from the mud, which seems to have a sucking, unrelenting grip on him up to his knees. 

“Now, hold on Arthur,” John says quickly, but Arthur’s already running at him, tackling him back down into the slop with a wordless shout. 

“They’ve both got a lot of that,” Charles says, agreeing. Tilly snorts and digs through her sewing bag to pull out a brush and comb. 

“Come here to me now,” she says, gesturing to the ground in front of her. “Let me see about your hair.”

If Charles is surprised by the invitation, he doesn’t show it. Once it had become clear she expected no romance from him, that she didn’t hold that longing in his chest against him, it became a quiet, unspoken part of their routine - at least it had back before they were constantly on the run and all the little rituals of comfort were put on pause as they scrambled for their lives. 

He obliges her, settling down on the grass between her knees, bowing his head as she drags the comb through his hair. There aren’t many memories Tilly has of life before Foreman brothers plucked her from home, but she remembers the comfort of her mother’s hands in her hair, stern and steady. Their life had been one lived in the margins and there had been little time to spend idly, and even less where her mother could turn her full attention towards her. But this was one thing she remembered fondly, sitting cross-legged as her mother saw to her hair, the humor in her voice as she told old stories, the hope that she’d hoarded and rationed, scraped together like panned gold and finally set down into her only daughter’s rib cage, a seed planted in winter that was waiting for spring. 

Tilly smiles softly, looking out over the farm, ignoring for the moment the two fools splashing around in the mud. Her momma had been gone now for more years than Tilly had known her, but if there was something waiting on the other side of the grave, she hoped her momma could see her now - this quiet, peaceful life she’d found her way towards. 

“You been cogitating the last few days,” Charles says. Below, John and Arthur have given up for the minute, the both of them lying heaving in the mud. The wagon is still intractably stuck, possibly deeper than it was before.

“Have I?” Tilly says, combing through the few, scattered knots in his hair, grinning at the way he sighs when she drags a brush against his scalp. 

“Either that or indigestion,” Charles says, laughing when she clips his temple with the comb. 

“You are so sharp you’ll cut yourself, Mister Smith,” she says, separating his hair into sections with sure, deft fingers. “Haven’t you got enough to keep track of keeping Arthur from beating John’s face in?”

“Well, seems I’ve failed on that front,” he mutters, gesturing at the scene below. They’re still laying in the mud, now idly kicking at one another, apparently both too exhausted to get to their feet, but too bloody minded to give up fighting. “Tch. Arthur does a good job of pretending he’s, I don’t know - he thinks he’s just all the bad things he’s ever done. Makes him forget that folks might admire him. Especially when those folks happen to be his goddamn idiot brother.”

Tilly _hmms_ contemplatively, churning this over in her mind. “John doesn’t hate you for it,” she says eventually. She starts the braid at his hairline, deftly gathering the inky spill of his hair into regular, orderly plaits. “You do know that, don’t you?”

“I know it, Arthur knows it, John knows it,” Charles sighs. “John just don’t like being the butt of a joke. And he wants Arthur to trust him. And between both their prides, they don’t have enough words to sort that with talking. So, this,” he gestures at the destruction, “Was probably the only way they were gonna get themselves sorted.”

“Think John’s gonna puff his chest out at you and tell you to treat Arthur right?” she says, tsking at him when he tries to turn to glare at her over his shoulder, “Settle down for godsake, you won’t like it if I gotta start over.”

“Don’t you dare give him any ideas,” Charles says darkly. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed you didn’t answer my question.”

“Hmm,” Tilly says, but focuses her attention on the braid, the familiar, repetitive movements. After a long moment she says, “Mrs. Dunand pulled me aside before she went back down to town last week.”

“Oh? She think you’re carrying?” Tilly yanks hard enough on Charles' hair that he hisses even as he laughs, throwing his arms up in surrender. “Alright, alright, sorry.”

“ _No_ , she doesn’t think I’m pregnant,” Tilly says archly. “But...she _does_ think I might want a job.”

“Doing what?”

Tilly is nearing the end of the braid, deftly twisting the last few strands together. As she ties the braid off with a simple leather cord she says, “Midwifery. She thought I might wanna - well, come on as her apprentice. She’s getting old, she says, and her daughter don’t want no part of it. And she said I was good help when it was Mary Beth’s time. Here, you’re all done.”

Charles passes his hand back over his hair, down the straight, regular bumps of the braid, looking content. He rolls to his feet, dropping down beside her on the log. 

“What did you say?”

“I said I’d think about it,” she says carefully. “I just. Never thought about something like that for me. Seems too - seems like too much. All I’ve ever done is nicked stuff and survived. Don’t reckon she’d make the offer if she knew half the things I’ve done.”

“She’s sleeping with Hosea,” Charles says dryly, “I don’t think Dunand is much put off by vague history.”

Tilly makes an uncertain noise, but otherwise keeps quiet. Below, Arthur has gotten to his feet and is offering John a hand up from the mud; for a second, she thinks John is gonna slap it away, or use it to tug Arthur back down into the mess, but it seems all the fuss has gone out of him. He lets Arthur drag him to his feet. Together they stagger to the back of the wagon.

“I think you should do it,” Charles offers. He takes a swig from the mug she’d set aside earlier, but his eyes are still down on John and Arthur. Arthur has pulled a soggy pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and John is patting himself down for a lighter. “Dunand isn’t an easy woman to impress, and it’s not like she made the same offer to Abigail, did she?”

“No,” Tilly admits, “She didn’t. Just me.”

“Well then…” he says, but his tone makes it a question.

“Just...never thought of doing something like that,” she says. “Hell, there was a few weeks last year I wasn’t sure I’d be alive enough right now to need to worry about working.” She butts their shoulders together. “Got you to thank for that, I suppose.”

“You don’t have to work,” Charles says, “The Blackwater money will last until the farm is turning a profit, and it’s not like you’re dead weight around here. But being a midwife - you could go anywhere, doing something like that.” Charles looks at her steadily, all the teasing gone outta him. “I’ve never known someone so cool in a crisis. I think...I think a lot of ladies would be lucky to have you there at their time.”

“What if Dudand takes me on and realizes it was a mistake?” she asks softly, finally finding the words that had been escaping her all week, something to give name to anxiety the offer had stirred in her chest. “I might not be able to - hell, I didn’t even know how to read until Hosea took me in. Dunand is gonna get loaded down with some foolish girl who thought she was smart enough -”

“None of that,” Charles says, shoving his shoulder against hers. “Dunand is a good judge of character, and even if she wasn’t, _I_ am. If it’s not what you want, don’t do it, but… don’t decide that Dunand’s made a mistake before you even get started.”

Tilly makes a face. Down at the wagon, Arthur has passed John a cigarette out of his pack and John is leaning in to light Arthur’s before setting about his own. They’re talking too quiet to be heard but she can hear the familiar rumble of Arthur’s laughter; John’s gesturing animatedly about something, going on like the two of them don’t look like they just walked out of Lemoyne swamp.

“Yeah, you got real good judgement,” she says dryly. Arthur is wiping at his face with a filthy handkerchief, smearing the mud around worse than before. “Real _wise_ with the sort of fools you fall for.”

“My one glaring blind spot,” Charles agrees sagely. He knocks their feet together. “You should do it, Tilly. I think...well there’s a whole bunch happening right now none of us expected, or even thought to hope for. Don’t be the one to say you can’t do it.”

“I’ll think on it,” Tilly says, but she already knows she’s gonna head down to town tomorrow, seek Dunand out, and if Charles’ grin is anything to go by, he knows it too. “Think your man and John sorted themselves out,” she says, jerking her head at the pair of them. Arthur has clapped John on the shoulder and they’re talking in low voices, heads bent close. 

“For the time being,” Charles sighs. “Lets see how long it lasts.” He rolls to his feet, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Hey, I hope you both know the house only has enough hot water for one bath,” he hollers, jerking the pair of them out of whatever conversation they’ve waded into. “I reckon one of you is gonna be washing off in the pond and there was still ice out there this morning.”

Tilly laughs into her hand as - predictably - Arthur and John shove off the back of the wagon, tripping and flailing at each other as they make a mad dash for the house.

“Look what you done now,” she says, “They were just getting along.”

Charles gives her a cheeky smile, shrugging. “Truth be told, Abigail already used the hot water for Jack this morning, so the both of them are gonna freeze their peckers off in the pond.”

“You just got everyone fooled, don’t you,” she says, collecting her sewing to trail after him back to the house. Arthur and John have fallen into a muddy heap a dozen yards from the backdoor, shouting and scraping at one another. “Everyone thinks you’re just so _kind_.”

“It’s a long winter,” Charles says airily, “Gotta keep entertained somehow. Now c’mon, lets beat ‘em home. Hosea’s gonna have a fit if they track all that in the house, so I say we take the easy road and lock both the fools out.”

“Lay on,” Tilly says, gathering her skirts to keep pace with him. 

Walking back up to the house in the long, golden light of late afternoon, Tilly thinks about her momma and this strange family she’s bought with blood and tears and so much wild, boundless good fortune. She presses her knuckles against her sternum, where that small, tender hope has lived so long, which has spent so much time waiting for a kinder world. _Now_ she thinks, imaging holding that small, tender seed up to sun. Maybe the time had finally come to unshackle those old dreams and turn them loose on the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I just - Tilly, guys. I adore her. 
> 
> Many thanks to the illustrious [superfxckboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nukapoprocket/pseuds/nukapoprocket), who graciously beta'd and offered encouragement! RDR2 would not be nearly as fun without you to flail with. 
> 
> I sort of threw this together as a catch all for any stories that aren't big enough for their own fic, so if you have any requests or suggestions, please let me know! I'm over at [allthingsmustfall](https://allthingsmustfall.tumblr.com/)


End file.
